And whilst I feel impelled by such convictions to resist the summary
rejection of this Petition upon principle, I am irresistibly led to
the same conclusion by considerations of policy and expediency. I
deny that such considerations should decide the question; but seeing
they have been urged into it, I shall concede to them all due
respect.
We have been told that the prayer of the Petition is for a thing
which the Constitution does not permit to Congress, and so the
petition itself should not be received. I ask of the House how it
appears that we have no right by the Constitution to legislate upon
the subject matter of the Petition? It may be so; and it may not.
One member of the House has earnestly averred that it is; another
that it is not. Which of them is right? I confess, for myself, that
I cannot think it becomes the House to decide either way, upon the
mere _ipse dixit_ of individual members. Besides, the Petition calls
in question not only slavery, but also the _commerce in slaves_. And
will any gentleman affirm that the slave trade of the District is
among those holy things which Congress may not constitutionally
handle? Is this District set apart by the Constitution, under
whatever changes of opinion or fact the progress of civilization may
introduce, to be unchangeably and forever a general slave market for
the rest of the Union? I confess that I, again, am disappointed in
that, among all the confident things said in denial of the
constitutional powers of Congress in this matter, there has not
been, so far as I remember, any systematic argument on the perfectly
distinct branches of the double constitutional question involved in
it, namely, the slave property, and the slave traffic, of this
District.
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